Providing radiation therapy to patients diagnosed with cancer includes creating a radiation treatment plan. Often, where the cancer is localized in the patient's anatomy, such as in a tumor, the creation of the radiation treatment plan involves participation by medical personnel for solving a difficult geometric problem and/or making judgment calls related to the total radiation dose or total dose received by the tumor and nearby healthy tissue, including organs at risk (OARs). Creating the radiation treatment plan can be a time consuming process that involves multiple medical personnel providing multiple iterations of the treatment plan over many days, which may increase the time from diagnosis of the cancer to treatment of the cancer.
In an example of a conventional process for the diagnosis and treatment of tumors, a diagnostic scan, such as a computed tomography (CT) scan, is taken of the patient to localize a tumor and a biopsy of the tumor is taken to histologically verify that the tumor is malignant. Next, treatment contours of the three dimensional envelope defined by the tumor's shape and the shape of the OARs are drawn up and a treatment prescription is developed by a clinician or an oncologist. The treatment prescription prescribes a total radiation dose to be delivered to the tumor over the course of treatment and a maximum level of radiation to be absorbed by the OARS. Next, the treatment prescription is provided to medical personnel, such as a dosimetrist, and a radiation delivery plan is developed by the medical personnel. The radiation delivery plan includes radiation beam orientations, shapes, and fluences using a given radiation type and delivery method to achieve the radiation levels, including the total dose levels, defined by the treatment prescription. Treatment constraints, including at least the treatment prescription and the radiation delivery plan, are iteratively changed by the medical personnel to meet minimum standards and to satisfy the oncologist. The final iteration of the radiation delivery plan is used to treat the patient.
This process for developing a radiation treatment plan can take many days, especially in cases in which the medical personnel, including the dosimetrist and/or the oncologist, change the treatment constraints over a number of iterative cycles.